Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

I think the stuff Zawodony brings up has some very fair points. Though it's a concise post, really the definition of "Web 2.0" is lost on 98% of people (including "technical" people).

The original O'Reilly stuff is sound. Particularly the web as a platform, the end of software release cycles, and rich user experiences.

I heard Twit 94 the other day (don't ask why I still occasionally listen, habit I guess) and they were all laughing out loud (literally) and bagging on Web 2.0 - during what approached a rebuttal to Paul Graham's Microsoft is dead post. (Which for the most part is accurate, despite the pounding it is taking from critics, such as the Twit crew.) They said things like "what am I gonna do for 6 hours on the airplane with an online word processor" and more of the same ilk.

What these clowns, and many other people, don't get is the "browser as the platform" part of what Tim originally said. Google Docs (which I use because the Twitters did) doesn't yet work offline seamlessly, but that is the ultimate plan. Even if not for Google Docs specifically, that is the point of Web 2.0. Ultimately you should not even need local install of the program, ever. All you need is the HTML document and your browser (and any related HTML assets, style sheets, script files, etc). The network access part is a secondary aspect. Applications built as HTML pages can request network access asynchronously when they are connected, and sync things - just like any other "rich client." The difference of course, is another of Tim's original points, no more release cycles. You get a new version of the app as soon as you connect online again, it might even update itself as you use it - and all the while it retains the zero install point of being browser based (and browser plugins don't directly amount to the same thing, but are close, stuff like Macromedia Apollo and such). Granted, we aren't completely there yet, in terms of making the online and offline transition seamless, with just an HTML page - but we are on that track (a locally hosted page might work, with a local web/app server that serves up HTML pages that inject and install themselves in said local server, and then run from there and are "aware" when they can gain outside access beyond that local server, and when they can't).

Web 2.0 is a joke, in terms of the way the term is bandied about (and I still don't prefer the name itself). The concepts behind the true definition though, and the companies and apps that actually get those concepts implemented, are no laughing matter.